Pages

Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Preservation and Proposition

Our mission is to document the pivotal Second Amendment events that occurred in Frontier Mercersburg, and its environs, and to heighten awareness of the importance of these events in the founding of our Nation.

We are dedicated to the preservation of the place where the Second Amendment was "born" and to the proposition that the Second Amendment (the "right to bear arms") is the keystone of our Liberty and the Republic.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

COLUMBIA, S.C.- Some 57 House lawmakers have signed on to a bill that would make it illegal for doctors to discuss gun safety with their patients.

The bill has stunned some doctors, especially pediatricians, who say they do talk with patients about safety steps to be taken when there's a gun in the household, to make sure a child isn't accidentally shot. Besides, they say, they are guaranteed free speech under the First Amendment, just as gun owners have gun rights under the Second Amendment.

"They (gun rights supporters) are trying to get Big Government to come in and dictate what we can and cannot say, while at the same time, they are trying to tell Big Government to stay out of their right to own guns," said Dr. Deborah Greenhouse, a Columbia pediatrician who is president of the S.C. Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In the past 10 years, Greenhouse said, two children who were patients of her pediatric group's practice were killed in home gun accidents that might have been prevented if more safety procedures had been in place. Since then, she said, she has made it a point to ask patients if guns are in the home and, if the answer is yes, to review a safety checklist."No one has ever taken offense, and numerous people have thanked me," she said. "Many families aren't aware of all the safety procedures I discuss. And you wouldn't believe how many children know where their parents' guns are."

That's exactly the kind of doctor-patient conversation that a bill by Rep. Joshua Putnam, R-Anderson, would outlaw in South Carolina.

"We don't want citizens to feel like they are going to be intruded upon whenever they go to a physician," Putnam said in an interview last week.

Under Putnam's bill, except in relevant emergency situations, doctors would not be able to ask patients if they have guns. Since many gun safety discussions originate with that question, the bill could stop doctors from initiating conversations about safety.

The reason for the bill, Putnam said, is that he's trying to protect doctors from any future federal law that might force them to ask patients about gun ownership.

"What we are kind of scared of is where this will go down the road," Putnam said.

The bill contains no penalty. "We don't want to charge them with a felony or anything like that," Putnam said.

Some powerful lawmakers like the bill. House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, said, "I don't think it's a doctor's business to be asking about guns as part of medical treatment. People go to a doctor's office to be treated. That's not part of the treatment."

Delleney said he's not trying to limit doctors' freedom of speech, since a doctor can always talk about gun safety after office hours. "If doctors want to call them up or go visit them at home as a friend, I don't have a problem with that," Delleney said.

Delleney also said he's worried that doctors will keep a record of which patients own guns. "It's going to wind up recorded somewhere that they have guns, and it's their right to have guns," he said.

Putnam's bill doesn't refer at all to medical records. But Delleney, who in his job as a lawyer sees medical records, says, "That's what would happen."

The bill underscores a clash of values: Many doctors see gun injuries as a health hazard that can be prevented.

"Educating patients about safety issues is called 'anticipatory guidance -- preventing accidents, whether it's a car or gun or do not smoke in the house with a child -- it's at the heart of what we do," said Dr. James Durant, a Sumter pediatrician who in 2005 helped lead a crusade that led to the Legislature's passing a mandatory seat belt law.

Officials now credit that law with saving hundreds of lives a year across South Carolina.

Reservations
Some lawmakers have reservations about the bill. Rep. Chip Huggins, R-Lexington, originally signed on as a co-sponsor but later removed his name.

"I heard from several physicians in my district. Most were pediatric folks, and they had concerns about safety," Huggins said.
In the past three months, three children in South Carolina have been shot and killed in their homes in the kinds of accidents that Greenhouse said she is trying to warn parents about. According to authorities:
-- Tmorej Smith, 3, was shot and killed Feb. 1 in his Greenville apartment while he and his sister played with a loaded handgun.

-- Easton Brueger, 8, was shot and killed by his father Dec. 30 in his Bennettsville home while his father was cleaning a rifle.

-- Sincere Smith, 2, was shot and killed in his Horry County home after he grabbed a loaded handgun sitting on a table.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott called Putnam's bill "asinine."

"Instead of preventing people from talking about gun safety, we should be encouraging more people to speak out," Lott said.

About 10 years ago, Lott said, one of his deputies' children was killed in a home gun accident. A neighbor's child came into the house, found the deputy's gun, which contained one bullet, and accidentally shot the deputy's child.

No one keeps precise statistics on the number of S.C. children killed and injured each year in home gun accidents. What statistics are kept on children are lumped together with firearm injuries and deaths that are caused by crime or are suicides or accidents.

Bill's chances

The S.C. Medical Association has not taken a position on Putnam's bill.

But Rep. Todd Atwater, R-Lexington, who is executive director of the S.C. Medical Association, said he doesn't favor any bill that would prevent or require a doctor to discuss certain issues with a patient. He is not a co-sponsor.

Last week, Putnam said he is working on an amendment that will give doctors more freedom to talk about gun safety as well as protect them from any future federal mandates that order them to discuss gun safety. "Both sides will be pleased with this legislation," he predicted.

Although the bill has been assigned to Delleney's Judiciary Committee, it has not yet been assigned to a subcommittee. Typically, amendments and hearings on a bill are held at the subcommittee level.

Greenhouse said she knows she'll be criticized for wanting to talk gun safety with patients. Indeed, a recent letter to the editor of The State newspaper said, "Talks about gun safety belong to dads, not pediatricians."

But other doctors don't want government dictating what they tell patients.

Dr. Allison Harvey, an emergency room physician at Palmetto Health Richland hospital, said she's a gun owner and a "strong supporter" of gun rights. However, "I don't think anybody should tell a physician what they should or should not tell a patient in the privacy of their own office," she said.

In the 18 years she's been an emergency physician, Harvey said, she has treated six to 10 children with gunshot wounds, half from hunting accidents and half from loaded guns being left out in homes.

"Every single one of them could have been prevented," said Harvey, a former president of the South Carolina College of Emergency Physicians.

Durant said, "It's better to prevent an accident than have to treat one."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Save the Birthplace of Our Gun Rights - Donate Here

It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.